by James Slater – Fight fans everywhere have surely read the depressing news about how all efforts at saving the showdown everyone wants to see have failed. How what could have been “the richest fight in boxing history” is now a dead duck (barring some semi-miraculous bringing of it back to life later in the year). How the battle of the pound-for-pound kings, Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Junior seems to be forever relegated to mere “dream fight” status. The question, the biggest question anyway, is what now for the two stars?
Always having a back-up plan for “Pac-Man” due to the way he says he “always knew” Mayweather would opt out of the mega-fight because Floyd is a “psychological coward,” promoter Bob Arum has looked at Pacquiao fighting maybe WBA 154-pound ruler Yuri Foreman or maybe flashy New Yorker Paulie Malignaggi. The latest on this, according to a number of web sites, is that the Filipino southpaw will attempt to win his eighth title in as many weights with a fight with the newly crowned WBA champ at light-middleweight..
As to what “Money” will do, there has been talk of him facing Malignaggi and also, some quite ridiculous talk of him fighting Ricky Haton’s younger brother, Matthew (no disrespect to “Magic,” but we all know he would have almost no chance at all of even making it a good fight, such is the difference in class of the two men). If this is what we get, then, with Pacquiao-Foreman and Mayweather-Malignaggi both taking place in either March or thereabouts of this year – who amongst boxing people – media, fans and the like – will be happy?
At any other time, these two prospective fights, though they would hardly have been gushed over, would have been deemed reasonably exciting ones. The chance to see Pacquiao having a shot at making even more history wouldn’t have been sneezed at, and a fight between the two boxing brains that are Mayweather and Malignaggi would have been welcomed by the purists. But this it not any other time; this is a time when we were thisclose to seeing one of the biggest fights in history taking place, a fight that would have given our oft-troubled sport an enormous shot in the arm (no pun intended after all the blood test arguing that’s been going on!). And as such, neither “replacement” fight is going to come anywhere near close to satisfying the fans.
Just imagine, that in late 1970, with the whole world looking forward to “The Fight of The Century” between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, one of the two boxers demanded something of the other that the other guy didn’t like in the slightest and refused to do. Then, after what seemed like months of going back and forth in a futile manner, the fight was announced as being “off!” How upset would fight fans of those days have been? Today, even though we all know fights are harder to make now, and even though we are used to disappointments in a way 1970s fight fans were not – the fact that Pacquiao-Mayweather is “off” brings with it some major heartache.
Sure, both fighters will move on (probably to the two fights mentioned above) and both guys will continue to entertain us. But with them not now facing one another, the cheers and/or jeers won’t be made with quite the same enthusiasm.